


What We Do

by Mireille



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Buffy Wishverse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-08-04
Updated: 2004-08-04
Packaged: 2018-08-16 15:13:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8107087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: An AU version of "The Wish," where Giles is interrupted before he can smash Anyanka's pendant.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2004 version of the Choose Your Author ficathon.

"This is the world we made. Isn't it wonderful?"

Anyanka's hands tightened around his neck, and Giles silently cursed the author of the reference volume that had implied that vengeance demons' only power was in their ability to grant wishes. Mentioning that they did possess demonic strength would have been useful, and if he survived, he would have to write a letter to the publisher suggesting that an updated edition was in order. But Anyanka's grip was strong, and he didn't know that he'd be able to break it, no matter how hard he struggled. His vision was beginning to blur, so he strongly doubted that--

"Dear me, Ripper, you're really going to have to learn to keep your door locked."

Lack of oxygen was making him start to hallucinate, Giles thought, and his subconscious had a rather bizarre sense of humor for conjuring up that particular voice as one of the last things he ever "heard."

"Am I interrupting something?" the voice continued. 

Anyanka's grip relaxed a little as she turned toward the source of the interruption. "You can't save him," she said.

"I wouldn't dream of it. Go on with what you were doing; I'll just wait here."

Taking advantage of her momentary distraction, Giles shoved the demon away from him, taking long gulps of air that burned his bruised throat. Anyanka looked from the intruder to him and back again, and then, without another word, disappeared--obviously not wanting to wait to see if she still retained the advantage. Teleportation, apparently, was something else he'd have to mention in that letter. 

"You fool!" Giles snapped, glaring up at the other man. "Do you have any idea what you just did?"

Ethan raised an eyebrow. "Saved your life, it looks like. Although of course, it'd be too much to expect that you'd be grateful to me for it."

"Damned the entire world, more like it. Although," he added, still glaring at him, "it would be too much to expect that _you_ would care." 

"And why wouldn't I? I do live in the world." 

"And it doesn't matter to you how many people die, just as long as you're safe."

Ethan shook his head. "You're not still going on about that, are you? If you'd left town when you started having the dreams, all those people would have been safe." 

"If you hadn't tried to--" Giles broke off, shaking his head. When Eyghon had returned last year, Ethan had kidnapped a student from the school and placed Eyghon's mark on him, trying to mislead the demon. It had worked, after a fashion; both Giles and Ethan had survived, but several people had been killed before Giles had been able to stop Eyghon--by beheading him while he was in the body of an innocent bystander. But Ethan knew all of that, and had made it clear that as long as he had survived the experience, it didn't matter to him what the cost had been--just as he'd always made it clear before. "There's no point in arguing with you."

"There never is," he agreed with a grin.

Giles rubbed at his neck gingerly; if he went in to look in the mirror, he rather suspected he'd see finger-marks where Anyanka had been throttling him. "What are you doing here?" he asked. As if things weren't bad enough at the moment. The last thing he needed was his own personal bad-luck charm following him around--or Ethan's attempts to entertain himself making the situation in Sunnydale still more complicated. 

"At the risk of repeating myself: saving your life. No, don't thank me; virtue is its own reward. Or so I've always heard." 

"I thought you'd left Sunnydale."

"I did. I came back." 

"Helpful as ever," Giles muttered under his breath. "Why?"

"Believe it or not, I was invited." Ethan grinned at him. "I'm a civil servant, mate. Or at least an official contractor, hired by the Mayor himself. It seems he wants a sorcerer to help him deal with this little vampire problem you seem to have here." 

"And so you thought you'd put on a white hat and come to our rescue?"

"It seemed the least I could do." After a pause just long enough to have Giles wondering if Ethan actually expected him to believe that, he laughed. "At least, considering that he's paying me a quarter of a million dollars just for making the attempt." 

And with that sort of money, plus whatever bonus he was given if he were to be successful, Ethan would be able to concentrate on his own projects exclusively for quite some time to come, if not permanently. That would be tempting even to someone as protective of his own skin as Ethan Rayne, Giles thought. "That explains why you came back to Sunnydale. It doesn't explain what you're doing in my living room." 

"Maybe I wanted to talk over old times." 

Giles drew himself up to his full height, taking a few steps in Ethan's direction. "Maybe it's about time you gave me a straight answer."

"Or what, you'll beat me into a bloody pulp? Again?" Ethan looked down, toward his hands, and Giles realized that he'd been unconsciously clenching and unclenching his fists. 

"That isn't the worst idea I've ever heard," he said. 

Chuckling, Ethan said, "As much as I'm sure you're dying to get your hands on me again, Ripper, I'd been planning to tell you anyway. The Mayor forgot to mention that this Master character's more powerful than the average vampire. Nothing I can't handle myself, of course, but I don't see why I should take any unnecessary risks. After all, it isn't as though I have any interest in the situation beside a financial one." He shrugged, continuing before Giles could interrupt him. "I'd been casting a few spells to help me locate anyone else who might have enough magical ability to take on the Master, and the little spell you were doing--" he nodded toward the paraphernalia Giles had used to summon Anyanka-- "caught my attention like you'd set off a signal flare."

"And you followed the magic here?"

"Imagine my surprise when I discovered it was you. I'd have thought you'd have got yourself nobly slaughtered in an attempt to save the world by now."

"I'm sorry to disappoint you."

"'Surprised' was the word I used, actually." Then, frowning, Ethan said, "Speaking of things I found surprising, do I get to know what it was that I interrupted? Of course, if I've just discovered you have a kink for erotic asphyxiation performed by female demons, I'd rather not--" He broke off, grinning wickedly. "Actually, if that _is_ what I just walked in on, please _do_ tell me all about it. In sordid, loving detail." 

Giles shot him a look of pure disgust. "That was the demon Anyanka. She's a vengeance demon; she grants the wishes of scorned women."

"Have you been scorning women lately, Ripper? At your age, that's probably not the wisest move. You should take what you can get."

He didn't bother commenting on that. "She wasn't here for vengeance. I summoned her." 

For an instant, Ethan looked startled; then his features composed themselves into a smirk. "And I thought you were virtuous and pure and above anything like summoning demons for your own amusement." He shook his head. "Lies and more lies, Ripper. You'd almost managed to fool me, too." 

"This wasn't for 'amusement,' Ethan, and it wasn't adolescent thrill-seeking. I was trying to destroy Anyanka's power center."

"There aren't enough problems in Sunnydale, and so you have to go looking for more windmills to tilt at? And you wonder why I'd expected to find that you'd got yourself killed."

"If I'm right, Anyanka is the _source_ of the problems in Sunnydale. A great number of them, anyway."

Ethan shook his head. "You haven't been paying attention. This vampire calling himself the Master--and isn't that charmingly megalomaniacal?--is the source of the problems here, those that aren't a direct result of being located on a Hellmouth."

Giles went over to the decanter on the bookshelf, pouring himself a drink. He didn't offer one to Ethan; he wasn't exactly a welcome guest, and besides, if he knew Ethan--and, unfortunately, he did--he'd make himself at home in Giles' apartment. If he wanted a drink, he'd pour himself one. Once he was sitting on his couch, drink in his hand, he finally answered Ethan. "One of the girls from the school came to me, telling me a story about how she'd made a wish that made everything different. She was wearing a necklace bearing the symbol of Anyanka. I think she'd made a wish that changed the world from--whatever it was before--to the present situation."

"Because teenaged girls making wishes always go around altering the nature of reality?"

"You know how powerful demons can be, Ethan."

After a moment, Ethan nodded. "What did she wish, then? It seems unlikely that a high school girl would have created anything like this."

"She implied that it was her fault that Buffy Summers--that's, ah, the current Slayer's name--wasn't in Sunnydale."

Ethan was silent at first, and then, suddenly, laughed. "And so of course you believed her, because anything's better than believing that you aren't the Slayer's Watcher because you just aren't good enough."

"I was supposed to be her Watcher. I was _sent_ here to be her Watcher, when her previous Watcher died. The Council's seers had predicted that she'd be coming here from Los Angeles," Giles said wearily. No one on the Council had ever been able to explain to him how it was that they'd been so badly mistaken. The girl's mother had taken her to Cleveland, instead, for reasons no one had understood. There'd been a Watcher in Cleveland already, studying the Hellmouth there, and he'd taken over Buffy's training, to save the Council the trouble of re-establishing Giles halfway across the country. 

"Of course. Because otherwise, you'd have thrown your entire life away for nothing, and you'd never let yourself believe that," Ethan said, not even attempting to hide the bitterness in his voice.

"I didn't throw away anything worth having," he said, and took a brief, petty pleasure in seeing a momentary flash of something that would, in a normal person, have been hurt in Ethan's eyes. 

"You didn't throw away anything you'd have been able to keep," Ethan corrected him, sharply. He went into the kitchen, taking a tumbler from the draining board and going over to fill it with whiskey. 

"Do help yourself, Ethan."

"Cheers." Ethan's mouth twisted into a grin, and he drank half of the generous portion of liquor he'd served himself before he continued. "So you believed this girl? She summoned Anyanka and made a wish that changed the world?"

"I believed it was a possibility, at the very least, and Anyanka confirmed it herself." Then, glaring at Ethan, he said, "Destroying her power center would have undone the last wish she granted. But, of course, you interrupted us before I could do that, and Anyanka escaped."

"I interrupted you before she throttled you," he pointed out. "Besides, you're making it sound as though she's been permanently banished from this dimension. All you need to do is summon her again and destroy this power center of hers." He grinned. "You might want to wear some sort of protective collar. Something with spikes on it, just to discourage her from strangling you again."

"I can't summon her again. The spell will only work once." In the abstract, it made sense; while vengeance demons frequently found those people they considered to be deserving victims, they were also summoned by the more magically-inclined. If the spell to summon a particular demon worked more than once for any individual, there would be too great a temptation to try to abuse the demon's abilities. 

That was in the abstract. In the here and now, however, it was immensely frustrating--or it would have been, if he hadn't been talking to another magic-user, one with considerably more experience in recent years than Giles himself had. "Of course, there's nothing to prevent anyone else from summoning her," he said. 

"I'm doing no such thing," Ethan answered him immediately. 

"Don't tell me you _have_ lost your taste for summoning demons."

"Vengeance demons? It's not a taste I ever acquired. There are any number of accounts of what happens when someone 'unworthy' of summoning a vengeance demon tries it anyway. None of them sound like something I'd like to experience." His expression grew thoughtful for a moment, and he added, "At least, not in anything but a purely recreational context."

Whatever Giles was going to say was lost when the door opened again. He looked up at the two boys--Larry bleeding from a cut on his forehead, Oz limping a little--in surprise. "I thought you two were going home."

"Vamps," Larry said, rather unnecessarily. "They caught us and took us to-- look, we know what the Master's doing now, and it's worse than we thought."

Oz nodded. "He has this assembly line set up in an old factory--feeds people into it, and it extracts their blood."

"Kind of like a milking machine in a dairy," Larry added. 

"You saw it?" 

"Yeah. We were there--we were supposed to be some of the raw material," Larry said. "But then this girl came in, and all hell broke loose..."

"Girl?" Buffy had been headed to the Bronze, but if the Master had been at this factory, she might have followed him there. 

"About our age, maybe a little older," Oz said. "I never saw her before. Blonde, a lot of dark eye makeup..."

"Kicked some serious ass," Larry said admiringly. 

"Buffy," Giles said. "The Slayer. She was here; she went out looking for the Master."

"She could have been the Slayer, yeah," Oz said after a moment's thought. "She took out a lot of vamps without breaking a sweat."

"Where is she now?"

The boys looked at one another for a moment. Then, finally, Larry said, "There was a big fight. A lot of the vamps are gone--she took out Xander, and Oz and I got Willow--but then she was fighting the Master, and... I think he broke her neck. She's dead."

That stunned Giles into silence for a moment. He'd barely known the girl, and his interaction with her had hardly been what one could call heartwarming, obviously. But she'd been the Slayer, and if things had gone a bit differently, she'd have been _his_ Slayer. And she was dead. He closed his eyes, briefly, and even though any last remnants of his childhood faith in God had died in the past couple of years, he couldn't help offering up a silent prayer. 

When he opened his eyes again, all three of them were watching him: Oz and Larry with a mixture of concern and curiosity, Ethan with an amused smirk that Giles told himself he didn't have the luxury of paying any attention to right now. "And the Master?" he asked. "What happened to him?"

"We had to get out of there," Oz said. "We just barely got away as it was."

"So he's still alive."

"As far as we know, yeah."

"Then we have to go back in there." 

The boys both nodded. "Give us a minute," Oz said. "We should probably stop the bleeding on Larry's head. No point drawing any more vampire attention than we have to. And I want to tape my ankle."

"Of course," he said, and they both started toward the bathroom. They knew where he kept all the first-aid supplies; they'd spent enough time here over the past year or so to find whatever they needed.

"You're not serious," Ethan said, and Larry stopped to scowl at him. 

"Who is this, anyway, Giles?" he asked, and Giles remembered that neither of them had been involved in the business with Eyghon last year--mercifully, since that would have almost certainly meant that they would be dead now. 

"His name is Ethan Rayne. He's a sorcerer. And he's an... ah... an old acquaintance of mine," Giles said. That was probably the easiest explanation.

"Is he here to help?" Larry said, with a hopeful expression, and Giles was struck, as he so rarely was these days, by how young the two of them were: eighteen and nineteen, far too young for this. 

Here to help? Giles sincerely doubted that; Ethan wasn't precisely helpful under the best of circumstances, and Giles barely remembered what those were. 

"I was just in the neighborhood," Ethan said. "I've no intention of helping." 

That was just what Giles had been thinking, and so he shouldn't have found it nearly as infuriating as he did. But damn it, Ethan had come to Sunnydale to help deal with the Master, and he knew just how bad things were right now, and yet he was still being the same self-centered bastard he had always been. 

"Thanks for dropping by, then," Larry muttered. 

"You are serious," Ethan said. "Ripper, where did you find these two? They're nearly as noble and self-sacrificing as you are. Or that Slayer, apparently." 

"Yeah, we're serious," Oz said. "It's what we do." The two boys went down the hall, Oz leaning on Larry a little. 

"It isn't what I do," Ethan said to Giles, taking another drink of his whiskey. 

"It's what you're being paid for." 

"No. I'm being paid to find a magical solution to the Mayor's little vampire problem. I'm not being paid to go into some vampire dairy, as that young man so eloquently put it, and get myself killed. There isn't enough money in the world to pay me to do that." 

"The Mayor's paying you," Giles repeated--and he'd never thought much about the Mayor before, but if he was hiring sorcerers, then perhaps he should have been a bit more suspicious. Even if local politics, mystical connections or not, were rather unimportant considering that the Master and his inner circle were the real power in this town now. 

"He's not paying me to form close personal relationships with vampires."

Nancy was dead, and everyone else who'd been helping them was dead, and the Slayer was dead, and they were walking into the Master's stronghold, just the three of them, in a world that apparently wasn't even meant to be anything like this. Giles' survival instinct ruthlessly shoved his pride out of his way, and he said, "There are only the three of us: Oz, Larry, and me. We need help. We need _powerful_ help."

"And I wish you the best of luck," Ethan said. "No matter what you may believe, Ripper, I don't actually want to see you die," he added, and there was just enough of a note of sincerity in it that Giles wasn't sure if it was calculated for effect, or whether Ethan was, for once, being honest. "I'm just not going with you."

"Yes, you are," Giles said. "We need you."

"No, you need someone who actually cares about the problems here in Sunnydale. I care about doing my job and collecting my fee. Mainly the latter." 

Some of them didn't have that sort of luxury, Giles thought. This wasn't how things were supposed to be--not for the entire world, and not for him, either. The Slayer was supposed to have come here. They could have stopped all of this before the Master gained his stranglehold on Sunnydale. He wouldn't have been left here, "keeping an eye on the Hellmouth," fighting against what seemed like an unbeatable army of vampires with only a handful of teenagers to help him. 

But he was, and he didn't have any choice in the matter. He'd chosen to do something worthwhile with his life, and this was what happened. Ethan had remained as self-serving and compassionless as ever, and _he_ had the choice to walk away. 

The _hell_ he did, Giles thought, suddenly, shoving Ethan up against the wall. He clutched at Ethan's shirtfront, his voice low and furious as he said, "Yes, you _are_. You'll either fight with us or we'll use you as bait, but you are helping."

Ethan's answering grin was bright and cheerful, as if Giles hadn't been threatening him. "Well, now, Ripper. All you had to do was ask nicely." 

Larry came out, a fresh bandage on his forehead, just as Giles was letting go of Ethan. "There a problem?" he asked.

"No. No problem. Ethan was just volunteering to help us out after all," he said. 

Ethan smoothed the front of his shirt, looking rather like a cat putting its ruffled fur into place. "Volunteering. It sounds better than being press-ganged into it, I suppose. At least for your conscience, though I thought you had more of a commitment to truth than that."

He shook his head. "Shut up, Ethan."

"Can we trust him?"

"I'll be keeping an eye on him," Giles said. "If it looks as though he's going to betray us, I'll take care of it."

"You mean you'll kill me," Ethan said.

Giles smiled tightly. "Yes. I mean I'll kill you."

Larry nodded, going to the weapons chest and arming himself, then handing a bow to Oz when he came out of the bathroom, walking more steadily now that he'd wrapped his ankle. He passed an axe and a bow to Giles before saying, "Does he get weapons?"

Giles thought about Ethan in physical combat. When they _had_ got into brawls in their younger years--or rather, when Ethan hadn't been able to avoid having to fight in one of the brawls that he usually started and waited for Giles to finish--he hadn't been a particularly gifted fighter, relying on magic whenever he could and his natural agility and speed to avoid getting seriously hurt the rest of the time. "No. The last thing the world needs is Ethan Rayne with a battle axe."

Ethan snorted, the very picture of injured pride. "As though I'd need something that crude and obvious to protect myself with. A fire spell will take care of a vampire just as well as an axe will." 

"Suit yourself," Oz said, handing Ethan a wooden cross and a bottle of holy water--while his father's house had boasted of an extensive wine cellar, Giles had found himself living a life where it was far more useful to keep a cask of holy water in the linen cupboard. 

Ethan looked down at them as though he'd never seen anything like them before. 

"Take them," Oz said. "It doesn't matter what you're going to use to kill the vamps. Sometimes you just have to buy yourself a little time."

Ethan shrugged, putting the bottle and the cross in his coat pocket, and Giles led the way out the door, hoping that buying themselves a little time wasn't all they were doing.

***

 

An hour later, Giles would have been happy to just buy time. However many vampires had been killed in the earlier fight, they were still drastically outnumbered. They'd been fighting since they reached the factory, and they still hadn't been able to get close to the Master. Oz was limping again, and he and Larry both kept looking at Giles with expressions that said, rather clearly, that they weren't expecting to make it out of the factory. 

But they kept fighting--and once it became obvious that no matter how many vampires they killed, more would keep coming, even Ethan stopped complaining and just kept concentrating on hurling fire spells at them. Giles wasn't entirely surprised; if there was one thing that could keep Ethan's attention, it was keeping himself alive. 

A vampire came at him, and Giles swung the axe, desperately; he was at the wrong angle to go for her neck, so he just slashed at her arm, leaving a deep wound just above her elbow. She let go of him, snarling and growling, clutching at the wound, and fled. Giles turned, looking for the next vampire, just in time to see one--he'd been barely more than a child when he'd died, apparently, a couple of years younger than Larry--swing at Ethan with a length of pipe, grinning ferociously when he staggered and fell to his knees. He changed into his demon face, his fangs only an inch or so from Ethan's neck, when Oz fired his crossbow and the vampire exploded into dust. 

"You okay?" Oz asked as he reached down to pick up the crossbow bolt--no point wasting ammunition. 

"Splendid," Ethan muttered through gritted teeth. 

"Good," Oz said, and turned back to the fight. 

Ethan struggled back to his feet, swaying slightly and glaring at Giles. "Damn it, if you're going to force me to keep doing this, the least you can do is help me."

Giles brandished his cross at the next vampire, trying to drive it back so that he could pay attention to what Ethan was saying. "What do you need?"

"Come here." When Giles approached him, Ethan reached out, grabbing his free hand. "Try to strengthen the spells I'm casting." 

Giles nodded; they'd done this before, years ago, strengthening one another and combining their energies to cast spells jointly. It wasn't that difficult to fall back into old habits, familiar patterns, and the next time Ethan sent a fireball toward a vampire, Giles could feel some of his own magic going into it. 

He couldn't fight like this, but he could at least use the cross and the holy water to keep the vampires away; Ethan was having to work too hard to stay on his feet to concentrate on anything but the spells. 

After a little while, he realized that Ethan was using some of their combined energy to keep himself upright, and he worried less about the possibility of Ethan falling over with the next spell. In fact, it seemed that Ethan was feeling enough like himself that he could turn to Giles and grin. "Just like old times, isn't it, Ripper?"

He'd been thinking the same thing, of course; they'd done this so often back in the old days, and despite their current animosity, it still felt like the most natural thing in the world. He could almost fool himself into thinking that it _was_ the most natural thing in the world, that the two of them working together so well came from something other than sheer desperation. That there was some chance it could continue once the situation wasn't quite so dire. 

But once Ethan put it into words, he could see how ludicrous that thought was, and he shook his head. "This is nothing like old times," he snapped. "For one thing, this is necessary, responsible behavior."

Ethan grinned. "I try not to think about that," he said, as he watched another vampire stagger back from them in flames. "It takes all the fun out of life."

"This isn't fun," Giles said. 

"You got that right," Larry said; he'd been watching them both for the past few minutes, often enough that Giles had wondered if he was going to be in for some awkward questions later, but now he was looking away, at the heavy steel doors that led deeper into the factory. 

Giles turned to see what Larry was looking at, and he was forced to agree. There must have been at least two dozen vampires coming through the doors--and there were already several vampires still in the room. 

"I can't keep this going forever," Ethan said, under his breath. 

"Getting old?"

"I didn't exactly have time to prepare for this," he pointed out, glaring at Giles, and Giles couldn't help but grin a bit. It was outright juvenile of him to enjoy getting under Ethan's skin like that, but Ethan always did bring out the more immature side of his personality. 

"Uh, everybody?" Oz said, as he kicked at a vampire that was trying to grab him. "I think a dignified retreat might be in order...." 

Giles nodded. "You're right."

"Finally," Ethan muttered. "What's the plan?"

"We run," Larry said.

"Brilliant."

"Have a better idea?" Larry snapped, and Ethan shook his head.

Giles slung Ethan's arm around his shoulders before Ethan could say anything else. "Not a word," he told him. "I know you're in no shape to run out of here."

"Giles, we need to hurry," Oz said. 

"You two go on ahead. We'll meet back at my apartment." 

The boys both gave him worried looks, but self-preservation was still a powerful instinct, and they turned around and ran. Giles began backing toward the door, helping Ethan along, still using the cross to keep the nearer vampires at bay. 

"You're going to get yourself killed," Ethan said. "How very heroic of you." 

Giles didn't even bother to answer. Ethan wouldn't ever understand that he wasn't leaving him behind because it just wasn't what he did. You didn't leave anyone behind if you possibly could; not if they were dead--because you had to make certain that they didn't rise again--and certainly not if they were alive. He just concentrated on getting them both out of the factory in one piece.

Ethan was considerably steadier on his feet by the time they were outside, and he pulled away from Giles once the factory doors closed behind him. "Which way?"

"Over there." Ethan did slow him down a little, but not too much; Giles suspected that no matter how much pain he was still in from his injured shoulder, he'd reached his limit of feeling dependent, and would do anything he could to make it back to Giles' apartment on his own. 

The vampires didn't pursue them, which just lent more support to the boys' story of something important going on in the factory. If Buffy had managed to disrupt it, they'd be trying to get things back under control, and four very determined, armed humans were probably more trouble than they were worth. And they were due a little bit of luck, Giles thought, even if it wasn't anything very much.

Giles had expected Oz and Larry to already be in the apartment when they arrived, but the living room was empty. "They should be here by now." 

"You worry too much." 

"With good reason."

Ethan shrugged, then winced when he moved his shoulder. 

"Take your shirt off," Giles called as he started toward the bathroom to get the first aid kit.

"With your little junior Watchers due back at any moment?" He chuckled. "I thought you didn't like an audience."

Giles shook his head, exasperated. "I want to look at your shoulder, for heaven's sake." He disappeared into the bathroom, getting out the box with first aid supplies, and coming back out into the living room. 

Ethan actually had taken off his shirt, and Giles winced at the discolored swelling at his shoulder. "You should probably get someone to take a look at that."

"I thought that was what you were doing." Ethan gave him a tight smile. "And don't tell me you're concerned. You've done worse to me yourself, or have you forgotten?"

"And you've deserved it every time," he said. 

"How did I know you'd have found a way to justify it to yourself?"

"That isn't what I was doing."

"Isn't it?"

"Of course it--" The door opened then, and Larry stumbled in, with Oz lying motionless in his arms. "Good lord. Is he-- how badly is he hurt?"

Larry shook his head, his expression slightly vague and unfocused-looking. "As bad as you can be. He's dead. They..." He shook his head again. "He's dead." 

Giles got to his feet, going over to check the smaller boy for a pulse, for breathing, for any sign that Larry was wrong about him. Finding none, he let Larry put Oz down on the table for the moment. "What happened?"

"He, I don't know. He tripped, or slipped on something, and by the time I could get back to him...." Larry closed his eyes for a moment. "I got the vamp that did it, though," he said at last, his voice filled with anger and satisfaction. 

"Did you see what happened? Did they make him drink?"

"I think I got there in time," Larry said. "I can't be sure."

Giles sighed. They couldn't afford to take any risk, no matter how much he might have liked to spare Oz that final indignity. "We'll have to burn the body," he said.

"Yeah. I know." Larry's face seemed to crumple, just a little. "Dammit! That's two of us in twenty-four hours, Giles. What are we going to do now?"

"Keep going. It's the only thing we can do."

"Aren't you being just a trifle optimistic about your chances of--"

Giles turned around, glaring at Ethan. "If you value your own well-being at all, Ethan, you will shut the hell up, right now. Your opinion on this subject is neither needed nor wanted." 

Ethan glared right back at him, but fell silent. 

Larry looked from one of them to the other for a few long seconds, and then said, "Look, I'll take Oz to-- I'll take care of him, okay?"

"Are you sure?" He wasn't sure why he was asking, since he hadn't thought twice about asking Larry and Oz to burn Nancy's body, but maybe it was because there were so very few of them left. Because the next body they dealt with would either be his or Larry's, and he didn't want Larry to have to think about that. 

Larry nodded, saying quietly, "Yeah. I can take care of this." He picked Oz up again. "It'll be all right," he said as he walked toward the door, Oz's body cradled in his arms.

When the door closed behind him, Giles turned back to Ethan. "You should go," he said. 

"Actually, I'm quite comfortable here, thanks."

"You should go," he repeated. "Go back to wherever it is you're staying, because you can't stay here. I don't want you here--I don't want anyone here." 

Ethan just grinned at him. "Since when did I ever do what you wanted?"

He sank down onto the couch next to Ethan. "I just want to be left alone," he said. He wanted to go upstairs and find his bed, though he doubted he'd be able to sleep. He'd known when the children started helping him to fight against the vampires that they could die, but he couldn't have told them to stay away. This was their town, and this was their fight, and there was no way that he could deny them the right to try to protect their homes and their families. 

That didn't make it any easier to watch them die, and all Giles wanted to do was to go upstairs and drink himself into oblivion. 

"You're stuck with me," Ethan said cheerfully. "Sorry about that." 

"Yes, I can tell," Giles muttered. 

"I've been telling you for years that you're stuck with me," Ethan pointed out. 

"And I've been telling you for years that I don't want to be," he said. 

"Too bad. You always will be." 

Giles opened his mouth to protest, when suddenly, with only a slight tightening around his eyes when he moved his shoulder, Ethan leaned over to kiss him. At least, technically, it was a kiss, although in Giles' mind, that word suggested something of tenderness, of affection. Ethan's mouth pressed against his, and the only thing it suggested was want. Pure, raw, and demanding, Ethan's tongue pushing past his lips, and Giles could feel the palpable need in the kiss, though he wasn't sure if it was his or Ethan's.

Giles pulled away. "Ethan--"

"If you're going to say something tiresome, do shut up."

"Why are you doing this?"

Ethan grinned. "Why do I ever do anything? Because I want to, Ripper. Now shut up and let me do what I want."

Giles weighed his options. He could get up and go to bed, though he wasn't certain that Ethan wouldn't follow him. He could throw Ethan out onto the street and hope that he could make it to wherever it was that he was staying before the vampires found him. Or he could let Ethan do what he wanted. 

He took the path of least resistance. In fact, he leaned over to kiss Ethan himself, just as hard as Ethan had kissed him before. He could feel Ethan grinning against his mouth as they kissed, and it ought to infuriate him that Ethan was gloating that Giles had given in. But right now, he'd cling to any chance for distraction that the Fates saw fit to provide him. 

"I'm not really up to anything acrobatic, I'm afraid," Ethan said, after a moment, his mouth still against Giles'. "But I think I can improvise." 

"I'm sure you can," Giles said, unable to keep himself from remembering a much younger Ethan, who had been able to 'improvise' quite well, indeed. He thought about asking Ethan if he were really up to doing anything; but then he realized two things: one, that if he asked, Ethan was stubborn enough to do it anyway; and two, that he was still angry enough at Ethan for last year (and so many years before that) that he couldn't be bothered with that sort of consideration. If Ethan wanted to stop, he'd let him, no questions asked, but he wasn't going to try to talk him out of doing this. 

Ethan grinned again, and Giles kissed him a second time, deeply, trying not to think about a simpler time, a time when things weren't quite as desperate as they were in Sunnydale. _But people still died_ , he reminded himself, and he felt Ethan wince as Giles' fingers involuntarily tightened where they were resting on his leg. 

"You really don't want to do this," Ethan said after a moment.

He forced his hand to relax. "I was just thinking." 

"You always did think far too much." 

He smiled, just a little. "And you always did try to get me to stop."

"Try? I was a master at it." 

"I'd rather like to avoid thinking tonight," he confessed, after a moment. 

Ethan pulled back a little, looking at him. "That was the point of all this, if you'd just stop talking long enough."

This time, when Ethan kissed him, Giles just tried to let go, to not think about Oz or Nancy or Randall or anyone else who was beyond anything that he could do for them, and just concentrate on what he was doing. He'd only touched Ethan once since the day Randall died, at least, not if you didn't count hitting him, but this still felt so very familiar; he supposed it was something you didn't quite forget. 

Ethan left his injured arm at his side--Giles was very conscious of the need not to accidentally touch it; he didn't want to hurt Ethan, not tonight--but his other hand was on Giles' thigh, sliding upward, and Giles smiled a little as he went on kissing Ethan, because it seemed that Ethan was going to be impatient tonight. He'd always complained about Ethan on nights like this, but never very seriously. Never seriously at all; it was as gratifying to his twenty-one-year-old ego to be wanted like this as it was now. 

Ethan was fumbling with Giles' zipper now, and Giles moved his hand away. "Let me do it," he said, and Ethan nodded. 

"As much as I hate to admit there's something I can't do..."

Giles was surprised to hear himself laughing. "I thought it was just that you're naturally bone idle."

Ethan grinned. "Yes. I like that better."

With two good hands, it only took a second for Giles to unbuckle his belt, undo the button, and ease the zipper down. 

"I can take it from here," Ethan said, and Giles let his hands fall away. 

"Are you sure?"

"I do think I remember what comes next," he said, smirking at Giles. "I haven't been the one burying myself in hard work and clean living." He was a little awkward as he slid off the couch--the need to protect his shoulder combined with, Giles thought, not being quite as limber as he'd been as a younger man--but he soon found that he didn't care, because Ethan was, as always, very good at getting him to stop thinking. 

He could almost think they were back in London, in the dingy flat they'd shared, back when his life had been magic and his guitar and Ethan and very little else--nothing else of any importance, at least. Even when he looked down at Ethan, he almost fancied he could see the boy he'd been back then: longer hair, face unlined, almost innocent-looking. Ethan had been able to look like quite the innocent, when he chose, even when he'd been on his knees in front of Giles in the back room of the pub where Giles had been playing his guitar. 

But even that was too much thought, soon, when Ethan's mouth engulfed him, and he remembered just how good Ethan had been at distracting him. He groaned, feeling Ethan's self-satisfied chuckle vibrating against him, and as Ethan's tongue worked against him, he could feel himself getting hard. It had been a long time since he'd been with anyone--since before he'd come to Sunnydale, in fact; the Master had risen shortly after he'd arrived, and he'd had more important things to worry about since then--but even if he had been, he thought he'd have reacted just as strongly to Ethan's mouth. 

It always had been his best asset, after all, whether he was charming himself out of trouble, or reciting a cantrip, eyes dark and wild, or doing this. And so Giles closed his eyes, giving himself over to this, and it was so easy that he almost felt guilty. He'd mourn later, he'd fight later, he'd agonize over what he should have done differently later, but right now, there was Ethan's mouth on him, and Ethan's tongue was moving quickly and certainly against him, and his fingers were clutching at Ethan's good shoulder, his other hand curled loosely into a fist at his side, and this was exactly what he needed, just a few moments when he didn't have to think, or worry, or anything but revel in the heat of Ethan's mouth.

And it was far too soon afterward that he moaned, thrusting helplessly into Ethan's mouth and coming, feeling Ethan's throat working around him as he swallowed, and far too soon after that when Ethan drew back, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and grinning. 

Ethan leaned back against Giles' legs, looking up at him rather smugly. "And if you can form a conscious thought after that, I'll become a Buddhist monk." 

Giles shook his head. "No. I don't think I can." He smiled, slightly. "Come up here and...." 

But Ethan was already struggling awkwardly to his feet. "I'm afraid I can't indulge you any farther," he said. "I've far more important things to do."

"Ethan Rayne, turning down sex. It's unthinkable."

"Lucky for you that you aren't supposed to be thinking, then, isn't it?" Ethan's smile was bright and sharp and false. "I've things to do, spells to cast, I can't be hanging around here. I don't want to spend any more time than I have to in Sunnydale."

"So you'll be moving on, then?"

"As soon as I tell the Mayor there's nothing I can do for him," he said. "Besides, I don't like staying in any one place very long. You know that."

What Giles knew was that he and Ethan had stayed in the same place for nearly three years, and Ethan hadn't seemed to mind. And the other thing that he knew was that Ethan was lying to him, although he didn't know _why_ he was lying, other than that he was Ethan and it seemed to come naturally to him. 

Just for one moment, he wondered what would happen if he asked Ethan if he'd mind if he came with him. Just for one moment, he considered leaving all this behind. They couldn't win, after all. The only thing that was going to happen was that he and Larry were both going to get themselves killed, and the Master would still have won. 

But then he nodded. "That's right, Ethan. Save your own skin, and don't worry about anyone else. That's what you do, isn't it?"

"Of course it is," Ethan said, grinning again. "I'm the only person worth worrying about."

Giles didn't look up as Ethan walked away, not until he heard the door close behind him.

He thought Ethan would have agreed if he'd asked to come along. But he couldn't do it. He might not be a proper Watcher now; the "white-hats" might be down to just him and Larry, and they might not survive for much longer. 

But he had to keep fighting, just like Ethan had to be shallow and self-centered and unconcerned about anyone's well-being but his own. 

It was what they did.


End file.
